


Cause Minds are Where the Monsters Creep

by bloodofpyke



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-09
Updated: 2012-11-09
Packaged: 2017-11-18 07:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodofpyke/pseuds/bloodofpyke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Harry wondered if that's what life was, turning things into games so they could be lived with.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was half a joke in the beginning: Niall scrunching up his nose whenever Harry leaned over to snag a chip, crying out an  _oi! watch where you’re directing that thing, mate!;_  Zayn waving a pair of scissors at him and winking, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips; Liam grinning and saying  _hey, Haz, I’m just wondering, have you ever been to Leeds, the lads and I just want to know_. It was half a joke, and he bit back a grin because he was afraid it would come out more of a shout than anything else, and he thought he wanted to keep this one quiet, wanted to keep it bottled up and close to his chest.

Louis didn’t join in when the other boys gave Harry grief, but he smiled and it was loud as hell and it was contagious and it was  _real_ , and Harry slid closer and closer, Louis’ hand creeping down to his, thumb brushing past the bracelet and he stilled on the couch. If he was quiet, he though, he could hear Louis’ heart beating, a kind of music, a kind of tangible love, held between his fingertips.

So they don’t talk about it, not with words anyway; they talk about it with glances between notes on stage, with touches that ghost during interviews until even Niall’s giving them a look, but not with words, never with words. They don’t talk about it, but it grows in the spaces left behind, blossoms in their chests until Harry thinks he’s like to burst. But he doesn’t; it just swells and swells until he can feel it in his blood, in his bones, and the ragged bracelet--and it’s been  _weeks_  now, and it’s not half a joke anymore, but rather something quiet, something almost sacred, and it ripped once, just a little bit, onstage after he tried something new with the mic and his vision was tinged with a glaring red until Liam pressed some tape into his hands with a smile and a  _calm down, Haz, calm down, we’ll fix it right up, see, good as new_ \--and the ragged bracelet becomes an extension of himself, a bit of his heart worn round his wrist. And he takes Louis’ heartbeat with him when he goes now, like it’s been woven into the threads, and he can hardly keep silent (but not with words, no, never with words; with fingers curled round necks, with grins pressed against skin, this is how Harry talks best, this boy who loves too loudly for words).

+

It was afterwards, and the screams were still ringing in their eyes, the flashes still blazing in their eyes. 

It was afterwards, and the air in Liam’s hotel room felt as electric as the packed arena, the five of them clustered around Liam’s computer while the rest of their crew gives them a bit of space, these boys who are forging new homes with each other wherever they go.

“Mental, absolutely mental,” Niall kept saying, hopping up and down and stepping all over Harry’s toes, sort of in tune with the music Liam kept playing, but sort of not, since he kept changing songs every thirty seconds.

“It was a bit, wasn’t it?” Zayn said, swallowing his grin with a gulp of beer, looking at Niall like he’d never seen anything like him before.

And the Louis grinned and cried out an “still is, mate!” before darting across the room and grabbing the new girl’s hands--Beth, Harry thought her name was, or Claire, maybe, and he vaguely thought he recognized her from make-up--and dancing her around in a tight circle, the room ringing with laughter. And it was strange, wasn’t it, how Louis could be across the room and Harry could still feel like they were about two inches apart, but then he supposed that that was sort of what family was, wasn’t it? A tangle and tangle of strings all thumping to the same beat?

They drank too much in the end, because they were young and on top for the moment; because they figured they might as well soak up their youth while they still had it. So they drank until the world was tipping on its edge and spinning a little, and Zayn had to steady himself on Liam, the two of them tripping back onto the bed, Liam giggling like a little kid and Zayn grinning into Liam’s shoulder like this was better than being on stage, even.

And, like he’d been called, like he had them on some sort of drunk-teenage alert (not that Harry was really putting it past him, truth be told), Paul poked his head round the door and told them they had to wrap it up, they had an early day tomorrow and he sure as hell wasn’t going to be responsible for them falling asleep during an interview, he’d had a hell of a week as it was. And so the rest of the crew drifted out, in ones and twos, Niall tagging along with some of the catering guys, something about a half-finished cake that would be getting thrown away in the morning if it went uneaten.

“Good night, eh, lads?” Louis said, turning to look for his shoes before shrugging and giving it up as a lost cause for the night. He held out the crook of his arm towards Harry and bowed, glancing up at him through his lashes. “Shall we, m’dear Hazza?”

Harry hooked his arm in Louis’ and stood for a moment, looking at Zayn. “Malik. Get up, we’ve gotta grab some sleep or Paul’ll gut us tomorrow morning.”

“Or just not greet us with a warm smile and tea. But then, he never does that,” Louis chipped in, dropping his head to Harry’s shoulder while Zayn just toed off his boots and muttered something about just crashing in here tonight.

So Louis and Harry found themselves stumbling into the hall with only each other to fall against, spluttering and barefoot. “Fancy a sleepover for ourselves then, Haz?”

“Course,” Harry muttered back, trying to sweep his hair back and almost poking himself in the eye instead. “Yours or mine?”

“Mine,” Louis said, and Harry nodded, wondering if Louis knew how he felt about his hotel rooms--too big, too empty, too cold--or if he just didn’t want to walk down another hallway. Could be a bit of both, he thought, giggling as Louis tried to figure out which end of his keycard to swipe, and then--they were inside.

“Too tired to clean my teeth,” Louis muttered as he fell onto his bed still dressed, waving at Harry like he was a nagging mum. “So don’t get all prissy when I’ve got morning breath.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Boo Bear,” he said, crashing onto the bed next to him, hands outstretched and a breadth apart. 

“Shut it, you,” Louis muttered, sitting up and crawling closer to Harry until they were a heap in the darkness, all legs and hands and soft breathing.

They lay there for a moment, not saying anything, Harry’s fingers tracing circles on Louis’ hands, and then Harry remembered a line from a song he quite liked, something by an American band. “Like brothers on a hotel bed,” he sang out, giggling a bit because it was true, they were more brothers than anything else, really, and then he was kicking his legs against the bed, singing the line into Louis’ ear over and over again and trying to keep from laughing.

After the fifth or sixth time, Louis’ hands crept up to Harry’s chest, stilled over his heart, and Louis kissed the rest of the words right out of his mouth.

They were drunk, he knew, and he half wondered if they’d be grasping at that excuse come first light, but then he was biting down on Louis’ bottom lip and Louis heart was hammering away under his and there were hands grasping for an anchor and it didn’t seem so important, Harry thought, as Louis mouth found its way to his collarbone, the hollow of his throat, to worry about the next day.

+

The first time happened when they were watching a film, and the hotel room seemed oddly empty after a day packed with screaming fans, like the quiet is bouncing off the walls, crashing into the corners, and Harry could hear Louis’ heartbeat clearer than his own and this, he thought, is what home meant.

And they were tangled together on the bed, the blue light from the TV washing over them, and Harry reached up and took Louis’ hand, fingers twining together like this is what they were made for, this simple act. “Not now, Haz,” Louis murmured into Harry’s mess of curls, “someone might see.” And Harry could feel the smile against his scalp, could almost hear the crisp tones of Management (and he always thought of them with the capitol letter thrown in, like they were a single-bodied suit-wearing entity charged with ruling the world rather than just being in charge of five teenaged boys), the clear _you need to tone your relationship down if you really want to make an international impact_  still sounding off in his head.

The words echoing in his ears, Harry grinned and tugged Louis’ hand down, closer to his chest, and they fall asleep like that; tangled and intertwined and  _together_.

The second time happened when they were back in London for a handful of days and there was a thunderstorm raging outside and Harry was cooking in a sweater and not much else. “Hey, Lou, almost ready!” he shouted, leaning back from the stove so that Louis could hear him. He was on the phone with his mum, he knew, and there was still five minutes left on the timer; he reckoned that ought to give him enough time to finish up.

And Harry went back to his cooking, humming some stupid song that had been stuck in his head for days now, some poppy top fifty shit that Louis kept blasting in the mornings, and he would almost be mad since bad music taste is something he half finds personally offensive, but it was  _Louis,_  so he just grinned and let him dance around the kitchen table. He was so busy humming and dealing with the sizzling vegetables that he missed Louis walking up behind him, missed it until a tongue poked into his ear and Louis started kissing his neck. And he leaned back into it for a moment, leaned back as Louis hands slid up the back of his sweater, shivering at the touch, before he grinned and mumbled something about the fangirls and youtube hits and Management.

“They can bloody well shove off,” Louis answered cheerfully, hands running up Harry’s chest a moment before pushing him against the counter.

The vegetables burned in the end, and it wasn’t until the smoke detector starts beeping that they noticed.

And they formed it into a kind of game, because that way they can win; that way they can come out on top, stamping Management under the heels of their boots with a  _fuck you, we won’t do what you tell us._  And it was a private victory, an empty victory, one that didn’t rack them any points, but they reveled in it anyway, these teenage boys who’ve been told to love quieter, to love  _less._  And they told themselves that this way was better, that this way they would get their anger out in jabs and prods at the suits standing above them, that this way they could ignore the forced separations, the admonishing phone calls when they toed the line. It was better this way, they told themselves, because a part of them needed to think that, needed to think that they won’t be as angry soon, as curled up and hunched over and  _bitter_  at the way the world works.

+

“If you could date any member of One Direction, who would you choose and why?” They were back at the hotel, Niall sprawled over the room service menu, Harry curled up next to him looking through his phone. “Why do they  _always_  have to ask that?” Zayn asked from somewhere above them.

Harry shrugged, a shoulder crashing into Niall’s collarbone. “They don’t do their research?” he offered. “You change your answer too often?”

Zayn chucked a pillow at Harry, doing that laugh he always did when there was no around and he didn’t have to worry about looking like an idiot on camera. “Don’t think I ever said you, though,” he said. “Maybe you’re just jealous I don’t want to date you, Styles.”

“Malik, you couldn’t handle me.” A beat, while Harry sat up, knees knocking in Niall in place of his shoulder-- _oi you’re too bony to sit next to me, Haz, go sit on the bed, I’m trying to read! Niall, you’re reading the room service menu, calm down_ \--and pouted up at the rest of the boys on Zayn’s bed. “I never get asked that,” he whined. “It’s always, I dunno, stupid stuff about my hair and age and if I’d ever date a fan.”

“That’s cause they already know who you’d date,” Liam pointed out from behind the screen of his laptop.

“Our love is too strong to hide, Hazza, it’s true,” Louis sang out before he leaped off the bed and tumbled into Harry’s lap, bringing the two of them and Niall skidding across the carpet, Niall telling them off for disturbing his reading, now he’d never find out what the plot twist of the Tex-Mex Spring Rolls was, they were the worst lads to ruin the bit of light reading he was trying to cram in before the show. “Niall,” Louis started, rolling over so that he was half on Harry and half on Niall, his ankles hooked uncomfortable around Harry’s neck. “Just skip ahead to the last chapter and order the chips mate, I’m starved.”

And so Niall called down and ordered some chips, glaring when Harry pinched half the plate, and the afternoon was forgotten the way lazy afternoons with friends often are; slowly, making room for more memories, leaving behind only a swirl of laughter and a half-remembered inside joke.

+

“What are we?” Harry asked later, under the cover of darkness. It was a frail thing he and Louis have, he knew, and part of him wondered if he wasn’t ruining it, if he wasn’t shattering the glass of it all, by opening his mouth and asking. But he was Harry, and he needed to know, needed to be able to have something to fall back on when his heart was beating so fast he thought it might burst, when his grin was so wide his face was like to crack.

But Louis was Louis, and he knew the cost of this, knew that they could end up standing alone amidst rubble if they played this wrong, and so he only reached down and took Harry’s hand, fingers twining together, and pressed a grin into Harry’s shoulder, so he could feel it. They’re curled up in the middle of the bed, the moonlight tracing patterns on the rumpled sheets around them, and they fell asleep wrapped up in each other. Louis didn’t answer Harry’s question, and Harry didn’t push it. He didn’t want to be the one left alone in the rubble afterwards, didn’t want to be the one carrying all that weight on his shoulders, and Harry thought he understood.

And it turned into a kind of game between them, and Harry wondered if that’s what life was, turning things into games so they could be lived with. “What are we?” he would ask, and Louis would grin and light up and spin a tale out of thin air. He could see it then, the way Louis must have been in drama, a bit like the way he is on stage but  _more_. And suddenly what they are was hinging on the scripts in Louis’ mind, and it was fun, but there was a sort of desperation tinging the edges, like the games are all that was holding it together, like they were one poorly executed line from exploding. 

But it was working in a way, and the two of them build homes in the spaces of each other.

“What are we?” Harry asked, a leg hitched round Louis’ waist.

“A couple on holiday in Cornwall,” Louis answered, his voice barely even a whisper against Harry’s skin.

“Cornwall?” Harry scoffed. “Can’t we, I dunno, be a bit more posh than that?”

“You’re underestimating the power of the sea, my boy.” And with that, Louis tipped his head and kissed Harry until his heartbeat sounded like sea, all crashing and swelling beneath his ribs, a bit of freedom locked up behind bones.

+

“Home soon, boys!” Niall hooted after they’d piled out of the van and into Liam’s room. It was always Liam’s room they retired to after shows; it was neater, less littered with crumpled tshirts and half-read books and sweets wrappers, and the room service people tended to love him, sneaking extra cookies and pieces of cake onto his plates.

“Be nice to be home again,” Zayn said as they all fit onto the bed together, Niall caught under the arm of Zayn’s varsity jacket, Liam leaning back behind both of them, and Harry and Louis knotted up in each other.  _Home_ , Harry thought, the word an added heartbeat to the pules beating around him (and he could pick them out now, family as they were: Niall’s jumping and stuttering even as he lay still; Zayn’s slow and meandering almost, a spike as Liam leaned down and whispered a joke in his ear; Liam’s steady steady steady, the drum, the bass line of the boys; and Louis, Louis’ he knew best, all hiking and frenzied and hitched round his own heartbeat, together even in that). He blinked against Louis’ shoulder and thought about that, about how home was his flat he shared with Louis back in London, about how home was also scattered across the world, though, forged in impersonal hotel rooms and the backs of vans and in the quiet moments they picked up in and stacked on shelves in between shows.

“Be nice,” he agreed, fingers dancing down and hooking around Louis’ wrist, measuring him beat for beat.

“I know no one’s mentioned this, but I just wanted to say that it’d be quite nice to be home,” Louis said, they all laughed at that, Niall the hardest, head tilted back onto Zayn’s collar.

The conversation drifted a bit after that, Liam mentioning that they should all do a Livestream before they go home to thank the fans, Niall muttering something about getting in a few more pints, Zayn threatening them with some arty movie he wanted to drag them to. They fell asleep in Liam’s room to the sound of each other’s breathing, all wrapped up and tangled in each other.  _A proper sort of family_ , Harry thought right before he dropped off, a grin pressed in the space between Louis’ shoulder and neck.


	2. Chapter 2

It was after their second-to-last show that it began to needle Harry. 

“What are we?” he asked in a daze of lights and sounds, pressed against Louis on the battered couch backstage. It became a sort of chant in his mind, the words spinning round and round his head until he was itching to grab them and break them apart, to smash them to bits against the ground. And Louis cobbled some story about an art dealer and a painting thief and something about a cure for werewolves--he blamed that last one on that MTV show Zayn kept flicking on--and whispered it to Harry like he was reading from a book. He’d always been good at performing, Louis had, even for him.

“No,” Harry interrupted and then he was turning around, and he could feel his eyes going wide as his legs ended up in Louis’ lap. “What are  _we?”_  

“I just said that, you twat,” Louis answered, reaching over and swatting Harry’s knee. He was grinning at him, head tilted to the side like they were still playing, but Harry knew better, knew  _him_  better. He had seen Louis’ hand falter for a moment before he reached out, had heard that quiet note in his voice that he knew Louis had tried to stamp out. “Weren’t you listening? I’m Benard, and you’re Edmund, and we’re at that fancy museum in New York, y’know, with all those steps out front?” 

Harry looked at Louis for a moment before answering. Looked, and wondered if maybe he’d been wrong about their game, if maybe it wasn’t time for growing up and growing out, if maybe there was more to this thing than he thought. “Yeah,” he said finally, ducking his head. “Yeah, sorry, I just, dunno, drifted or something.” 

+

They were a few hours away from their last show, less than a day away from getting on a plane and going back home  _(home_ , Harry thought automatically,  _London-flat-home, not hotel-van-stage-home)_ , and Louis was crying.  _Louis was crying_ , and that, more than anything, brought Harry back, made him reach out a hand. And he almost wanted to bite out a curse, almost wanted to kick his boots against the wall, because his hand was shaking. His hand was shaking, and it won’t be enough. It’s never enough, he thought, but his fingers curled over Louis’ shoulder anyway, like they knew where they wanted to be and they were bloody well going there. His fingers on Louis’ shoulder, and he can’t tell who’s shaking anymore, and it was silent, and it was strained, but it wasn’t broken, not really, not yet, but it still wasn’t enough.

He could scream. Could scream, but didn’t; bit it back down, swallowed it with half a growl, and his fingers flexed against Louis’ braces, the knuckles going white, Louis still shaking under his touch. He glanced around for a moment, at the window above them, at the half-opened door behind them, at the stairs leading to different places, places where maybe Louis wouldn’t be crying, wouldn’t be shaking under his touch. And it’s almost ironic, he thought, how fucking  _open_  they’re being right now. He can still hear Management’s words in his ear, that snide  _you need to tone your relationship down if you want to make an international impact_ , and he almost laughed, wondering if screaming and breaking down in a stairwell hours before a show counted as “toning down.” 

He almost wondered if the fans would still gape and scream if they could see them now, all bruised and twisted and chewed up in an abandoned stairwell, but he knew they would, knew the words “Larry Stylinson” would be out of their mouths before Louis could turn away, before he could blink, their grasping hands already reaching out to take and take and take.

And suddenly he was angry again--or maybe he’d never really stopped being angry, maybe this was just another wave of the same storm, and he was spinning away from Louis, his hands curled into fists and it’s all he can do to keep himself from punching the walls. He’s not the angry one, he had to remind himself, he’s the charming one, the flirt, and he can’t bloody well go around with scrapes on his knuckles. But then he looked at Louis, huddled at the bottom of the stairs, choking back another sob, and it’s gone, suddenly, all that anger, and he’s back to reaching out a shaking hand.

A lifetime had passed, and they’ve surely missed their show by now, when Louis finally turned around and looked Harry in the eye. And it felt like another lifetime ago that that blue was crinkled and scrunched, a wrinkled ocean that was his to lock away and keep (“see, Haz, the sea  _is_  special,” Louis had laughed when Harry drank too much and confessed that he could quite like the sea if it were like his eyes, and he’d filed that away too, the sound of Louis’ laugh, all loud and shattering and  _his_. It came back now, that memory, and he hated it, wanted to smash it with his fists until it was gone. It wasn’t fair, he thought, that he could remember something like that in the middle of all this). But it was different now, and Louis was looking at him without the crinkles and his breath is full of kicks and sputters, and he still wanted, he wanted, he  _wanted_ , and his hands were balling into fists again, and his heart was hammering away in his ears like this wasn’t anything, like this was everything.

“I’m sorry,” Louis said, and it wasn’t just his breathing that was full of kicks and sputters; it was his voice too, and Harry’s hand reached out again, like he could smooth it away, like he ever had that power. “I’m sorry,” Louis said again, and somehow it worked, because his voice was smoothed out, but it was quieter, too, and that, Harry thought, was worse.

“Yeah, well,” Harry mumbled back, and he was looking at the ground now, scuffing his boots against the carpet, curls falling into his eyes, but  _fuck_  he couldn’t think of what else to say. And what could he say, really?  _Sorry I guess I loved you too much. Sorry, didn’t mean to stop playing and ask you to treat us like a fucking real thing for once. Sorry sorry sorry._

“Is it all ruined now?” Louis asked, and there was something in his voice Harry couldn’t quite place, something fragile and wearied and  _scared_. But he was off and running before Harry could even look closer, pushing his fingers through his hair until it was all waves and tufts. “Is it all ruined now, Haz?” he asked again, and it wasn’t fragile anymore; it was broken, it was shattered, and Harry was left standing amongst the rubble, scuffing at it with his boots.

And he was crossing his arms; he didn’t trust them to be out on their own, didn’t trust where they might go, and he stood in silence for a moment. All the things he didn’t want to say were crowding in between them, and he wondered if Louis could hear them too, if he ever really could, or if they’d already lost that.  _Sorry the games meant more than the truth. Sorry you listen to Management too well. Sorry I don’t mean enough to you._

He turned to go then, and he hated himself, hated himself for leaving, for letting Louis sit there alone before their last show.

_Sorry I can’t play the games anymore. Sorry I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Sorry for ruining stairwells._

_Sorry sorry sorry._

+

He left, but that the thing about being an international pop star; there was nowhere for him to go. He considered bunking off the concert for about two seconds before he pictured Paul’s face when he was nowhere to be found, or the phone calls and meetings he’d be pushed into with Management.

Niall was the first person he ran into when he got backstage. “Hey,” he said, catching Harry’s shoulder, talking around a mouthful of pizza, “what’s wrong, mate?”

It took Harry a moment to answer, he was so busy scanning for Louis. “Wha-oh, I just, dunno, Lou and I had a bit of a fight.”

“Doesn’t look like a bit of a fight to me,” Niall said, stepping back and scanning Harry’s face. “You look bloody awful mate, d’you wanna talk about it or something?”

_No, I’m fine, we’ll be fine, it’s all fine, thanks anyway._  The words were on the tip of his tongue, it had always felt weird including the other boys in his and Louis’ bubble, like he was shoving it in their faces or asking them to take sides. He knew it wasn’t like that, knew that they didn’t feel that way, but still. He opened his mouth to tell Niall that he was fine, but instead he shook his head a bit, wondering if he’d start crying if he tried speaking. 

And Niall hugged him--he was a fantastic hugger, really, for such a tiny little bloke, and the fans were always going on about how Niall’s, like, sunshine personified, and this was the first time Harry thought he actually  _gets_  it--and got Harry to talk about it, sort of cocking his head to the side and rubbing these small circles on his knee while Harry stumbled through the explanation.

“I just-I shouldn’t have forced him to try and like, label what we are or whatever, but I  _needed_ -it’s just so fucking  _hard_  sometimes, y’know? And with fucking Management telling us that we can’t, like, tweet each other or be seen in public sometimes or sit next to each other during signings-I  _needed_  him to-what if I ruined everything, Ni?”  _Don’t cry, don’t fucking cry, you’ve your last show in five minutes, don’t fucking cry._  “What if-what if we’re  _done?”_

And Niall hugged him again, rubbing his back now, murmuring things like  _sh, Haz, it’ll be alright, mate, you guys’ll be fine, I bet Lou’s already waiting to fall back into your arms, it’ll be alright_  and then someone was nodding at the boys and yelling that they had three seconds to get onto stage, and Harry was about to ask Niall if it was too late to skip off and go hide under his duvet until he was back on English soil, and then suddenly, it was their last show and they were all on stage.

+

The show was a bit of a blur, and Harry thought he might have to ask Liam to hide his phone afterwards because he wasn’t sure he could handle what the fans were saying--and he could already picture it, the comments about how he was lackluster and stumbling over lyrics and biting his lip too often to be passed off as sexy or whatever they usually said he was aiming for--but Louis was clear as day to him, prancing about the stage in his fucking braces like this wasn’t anything more than their last show on tour. It hurt, it hurt like hell, to see that, like Harry meant nothing, like the fact that they might be over  _(oh god,_ Harry thought, _they might be over_ , and he wondered if this is what was it felt like when your heart was breaking) didn’t faze him at all.

They were greeted backstage with cheers and shoulder claps and Harry shrugged them all off, grabbing Louis and marching him to a corner. He barely caught Niall exchanging looks with Liam and Zayn because he was busy staring at Louis through a mess of curls (“Haz, you need to cut your hair,” Louis had said to him once, leaning down and kissing each curl, “how can you expect me to swoon if I can’t even  _see_  your eyes?” and Harry was dragging a hand across his eyes while he stood in a dark corner with a Louis who didn’t even look like he was capable of laughing). “What,” he asked, and his voice was rougher than he’d thought possible, “the  _hell_  was that?” 

“I’m always good for a show, Haz, or hadn’t you heard?” Louis threw at him, and it was vicious, and it  _stung_ , the way, Harry was sure, Louis meant it to. 

“You’re being  _ridiculous_ ,” Harry hissed back at him, vaguely aware that everyone was slowly emptying the room  behind them like they had “AVOID: TOXIC” slapped on the wall above their heads.

“Ridiculous?” Louis repeated, stepping closer to Harry and  _fuck_  he could still pick out Louis’ heartbeat, could still recognize each spike and drop. “Is that a step up or step down from what you said earlier? What was it? Oh right, I remember now, you were telling me that I was using our games as a way to keep from growing up and loving you fully. Does that sound right to you? Or should I repeat it slower and maybe mumble a bit more so you can get it?” 

“I hate you,” Harry said. He wished he could take it back the second the words left his mouth because it was stupid, and it was childish, and it was destructive, and he could see the mark the words left on Louis’ skin. But he couldn’t, and so he leaned closer--and they were scarcely a breath apart now, and he wondered what Louis would do if he just closed the gap, wondered if there were any way that would work as a type of solution--and kept talking. “I don’t need you,” he sneered, “you’ve been holding me back, you were just a distraction.”

Stupid, childish, destructive.

He didn’t wait to see Louis’ face, and he wasn’t sure what he was more scared of; that the words would have hurt him, or that they wouldn’t have touched him at all.

+

He told Paul he was sick the next morning, and Paul took one look at him, all pale skin and shaking hands, and let him sit in the front on the way to the airport, arranged for him to sit by himself on the plane. It wasn’t strictly a lie, Harry supposed, drifting in and out of sleep, the world all a bit hazy and blurred, he  _did_  spend half the night curled round the toilet like if only he could get rid of the parts of his body that made him do what he did  _(stupid, childish, destructive_ , he had thought the entire night, and he woke in the morning faintly surprised that the words hadn’t imprinted themselves on the bathroom tiles, on his skin, on the sky), he’d be able to make everything okay again.

_It’ll be okay once I get home_ , he tried to reassure himself, wrapping his arms around his ribs, tilting his head to glance out the window, and it was sunny up here, above the clouds, and he tried to be mad about that, but it was too late, he was already falling back asleep.

He woke up once more before the plane landed, briefly, to the sound of Liam whispering something to Zayn about how it had just been a long tour, they just needed some time at home to sort themselves out, and it would all be fine. It hit Harry then, how wrecked everything was. Home, he knew, wasn’t really home anymore, not really, and he wondered if it would ever be. He fell asleep before Zayn could answer.

+

He sleepwalked through Heathrow, barely registering the screams and flashes, not waking up until Niall called out a “feel better, yeah?” before reaching over and shutting the van door and he was inside his flat. He turned to his side before dropping his bags, ready with a smile and a quip about how they could finally resume their typical Wednesday traditions, and it took him a moment to get it. 

He was alone. 

Louis wasn’t next to him.

His bags fell to the floor with a thud and he could vaguely heard his phone going off, and he was tempted to let it go, but what if it was Louis and it had all been a dream and he was locked out? What if, what if, what if?

“Hello?” he said, and he hated it, how eager and hopeful his voice sounded, but it was too late, it was out there and there was nothing he could do about it. 

“Haz?” It was Liam. Liam, not Louis, and Harry tried to keep from crying because  _fuck_ , he had really wrecked everything. “Haz, listen, I just wanted to let you know because you were pretty out of it today, and I didn’t want you to worry or do anything stupid. But, uh, Louis is going to stay with me for a bit, okay?” Silence. Harry supposed Liam was waiting for him to say something, to reassure him, maybe, that he was fine, they were fine, they just needed a bit of a rest, but he couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth, not trusting what might come out, so just stayed on the line, silent and chewing on his lip. “Right. Well, get some sleep and I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, sure,” Harry managed to force out before hanging up. He paused and stared at the phone in his hand, all slim and sleek and more Louis’ than his (he had stolen it one night, giggly and drunk and glued to Harry’s side, passing it back after changing his background to a picture of a unicorn, his ringtone to a Spice Girls song, and the other boys’ contact names--Human Garbage Disposal for Niall, DJ Moody Eyes for Zayn, and First Verse Man for Liam; the height of humor, for a drunk Louis). He stared at it, and it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t  _fair_ , that it hadn’t even been a day and Louis was already the ghost at his elbow, and before he knew it, he was throwing the phone against the wall, sliding to the floor as it cracked and splintered on the ground. 


	3. Chapter 3

It was hard, living in a world haunted by Louis.

It had been weeks, and there were still bits of Louis scattered and draped all over the flat, like he had snuck in while Harry was sleeping and forgotten pieces of himself everywhere. He’d spent a lot of time with the boys in the beginning, never all of them at once, one of them was always with Louis, it seemed, and it hadn’t helped. Zayn just clinked beer bottles with Harry while they moaned about love over whatever arty movie Zayn had flicked on in the background. Or else he jumped around until Harry agreed to pull on some trousers and go out with him, to some run-down bar where they would have maybe an hour of peace. And Niall usually just banged on the door while juggling four or five different take-outs, and Harry actually felt better when Niall was with him, like he was less broken, but it always rushed back the second Niall left. Liam was the worst though, and secretly Harry was grateful he always seemed to be the one on Louis duty. It was Liam, with the narrowed eyes and clasped hands that was the hardest to lie to, the hardest to put on a brave face for.

Because it was  _hard_ , it was fucking bloody difficult, and Harry didn’t want to be the first one to fall to pieces. 

But he already had, he knew; pieces of him had been breaking off and crashing to the ground, melting against the shards of Louis that had cluttered in the corners, alongside the walls, until the flat glittered with them, the fragments of the boys who had been more wholes than halves. 

Or maybe that had just been Harry, maybe it had always been Harry, and he was too caught up in it to realize.

He was alone, sitting amongst the splintered pieces, when he told himself that he’d had enough, that he was fine, he was over it, everything was okay, and that he was going out.

+

The bar was loud, and that was just the way Harry liked it. He was alone, and he swallowed that with a gulp of whatever the bartender had made him, something icy and clear, the idea that he was  _alone_  for the first time in months, in years. 

It took longer than he’d expected to get recognized; maybe people were in a bit of a shock, seeing him alone, maybe they thought he was someone else, just an ordinary kid who looked quite a bit like that pop star. And he liked that too, the idea that he could still be an ordinary kid. 

“D’you fancy a dance?” He couldn’t remember her name, the girl who was leaning over him and asking him for a dance, but he didn’t think it mattered; he looked at her, and all he could see was legs that went on for miles and eyes that were as far from blue as could be.

“Sure,” he answered, mouth curving into a grin, hand gesturing towards the center of the bar. “After you.” 

The dazzling lights of the club turned into the muted silence of a cab and then into the expectant hush of the girl’s--and Harry was almost certain her name started with an S; Samantha, maybe, or Serena--empty flat. And then she was giggling and he was stumbling into her bedroom, anchored only by her hand, and then they were falling onto the bed and kissing.

And then it was flesh on flesh and it felt  _wrong_  somehow, like he was cheating, or like this wasn’t where he was meant to be, but he was already there and it was too late, so he kept at it and before long, they were asleep on the bed and all he could hear was the heartbeat that wasn’t there.

Harry woke up before she did, blindingly early, really, propping himself up on an elbow to squint at the clock. The sun wasn’t even out yet, and he considered flopping back down and going back to sleep, but he remembered other mornings, Louis pouncing on him to demand tea and cereal and a better radio station because his all sounded like he was trying too hard, and then he was up and scrounging around for his trousers and blazer.

He left without leaving a note, and he briefly paused to wonder if it would get around, him sleeping and ditching, before deciding that he didn’t fucking care anymore.

+

He wasn’t sleeping, kept waking up to Louis’ voice whispering in his ear, to Louis’ fingers reaching down and lacing with his. He kept waking up in the middle of the night, sheets twisted around his legs, his body already turning towards someone who wasn’t there. He still couldn’t believe it when he saw the empty side of the bed.

It felt as if he was walking through a nightmare, like the word was draped in darkness, tangled in it, choked on it, and he was stuck, the darkness was coiling itself around his legs, his arms, his chest, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He remembered one afternoon--and he couldn’t remember where they were, so he liked to imagine that they were in London, and his and Louis’ flat, and maybe there was a storm raging outside, but it didn’t matter, because they had each other, and they were safe--and Niall was going on about some rumor, whipping out his phone to tweet something about how he would always be a member of One Direction and he would be buried in a One Direction shirt, something stupid and impulsive because it was Niall. He had been giggling about it, Harry remembered, shoulder pressing into Zayn’s chest, and Harry was sitting next to Louis, and it felt, it felt like maybe he was on the verge of exploding, like his veins were lined with a fire, and he was turning this into his new prayer, the feeling of Louis next to him.

And he wondered now, curled under his duvet, shaking hands pulling it closer closer closer, if this is what life untethered felt like. Harry tried to imagine what that prayer would have looked like, braided in the air between him and Louis; it would be bright, he thought, and shining, gold maybe, and he wondered if it was ragged now, if it was even still there.

(He remembered another time too; him and Louis alone during a thunderstorm, and he remembered how his bedroom felt like an entire universe. Remembered how Louis had pressed a whisper to his collarbone like a present;  _you love too much darling,_ he had whispered _, it’s like a flood, or a blizzard. Are you caught in it_ , he had whispered back, the words falling into Louis’ hair, messed, for once, not gelled to perfection.  _Maybe a bit,_  he had said, and it had felt like a promise)

+

The days melted into weeks, the weeks into months, and still the world was blurred and tinged with red, still Harry felt he was only half awake and half in a nightmare. 

Liam called him once, trying to convince him to go to one of the meetings Management kept forcing down their throats. “C’mon Haz, this is important, we’re still here, you know,” he pleaded through the phone. “You’re-you’re not alone, and we  _need_  you, and-”

“It doesn’t matter,” Harry interrupted, and it almost scared him, how quiet his voice was, how smooth, and on the other end, Liam was quiet. “Nothing fucking matters anymore,” he said, and he hung up before Liam could say anything.

He wasn’t asked to any more meetings, but Management kept him in the loop; throwing texts and voicemails and emails at him that he only skimmed, and it felt like he was peeking over the hedge into someone else’s life because this, this certainly wasn’t him. And he knew, too, how the other boys were doing, knew without being told because he could feel it, in a way. Liam had run a theory past them one night when they’d all stayed up too late and it was almost sunrise and they were running on Red Bull and the sort of energy that comes only when you’re young and you feel like you’re invincible, about how they were all phantom limbs of each other. “Check it,” he had said, and Zayn had teased him, telling him he sounded more like a mall cop than a kid, and he’d only laughed when Liam leaned over and swatted his shoulder. “No, but listen,” he’d insisted, and Harry had only half-listened, really, caring more about the way Louis’ arm fit around his waist than anything else  _(I was constructed for you, and you were molded for me,_  he remembered singing to Louis one night after a show, off-key and in between greedy kisses, and it was almost cruel, he thought now, afterwards, how neatly they fit together). But it came back to him now, floating just outside his reach, and he could feel it for the first time, could feel Zayn’s quiet uncertainty, Niall’s worrying locked under a layer of optimism, Liam’s hopefulness that was edged in desperation. He couldn’t feel Louis, couldn’t tell where he would fit anymore, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t want to, or because Louis had flicked some switch back when Harry had looked around the flat and didn’t see Louis.

One Direction was officially on a hiatus, he was informed later through a flurry of texts and emails, the words sitting there on the surface, because all he could think of was Louis and if it were possible to lose a phantom limb.

He switched his phone off, in the end, not sure if he could handle the world, not sure if he ever really could.

+

It’s been months, and Louis is still the ghost at his elbow.

A CD caught the sunlight one afternoon, and it made a rainbow, briefly, shining onto his wall, and he turned over in his bed and traced it even as it was fading.  _We should turn the CD over, Haz_ , Louis has said to him once upon a time.  _Maybe we’ll find a tiny little pot of gold, eh? We could use it to invest in some scissors to cut that mop you call a hairdo._  And he had laughed, pulling Louis’ away from his hair and kissing his fingertips, making his way up to Louis’ shoulder, his neck, his mouth. The rainbow had vanished by the time they stopped, but Louis still made it a point to flip over the CD before they left the room.

He heard the back half of Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend,” an old song by now, and he’s pulled back to a morning when Louis had wrapped his arms around his chest, singing the lyrics in his ear like they were poetry.  _If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go,_   _keep you on my arm, Curly, you’d never be alone._  And then he spun away, twirling around the kitchen while Harry had stood in the middle, hand reaching out for Louis.  _I can be a gentleman, anything you want, if I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go, I’d never let you go._  He’d stopping singing then, because Harry had caught him with one arm, as if it could ever be so easy to contain Louis, and then his mouth was busy doing things other than singing.

He was everywhere still, and a part of Harry wanted to kick himself for ever thinking that he wouldn’t be. He was like the sun, Louis was, like the sun and the stars and the moon and Harry was only the earth, really, something that gravitated towards Louis, rotated around him,  _depended_  on him.

He thought about the Leeds bracelet he’d finally torn off, thought about how he’d always imagined he would feel it somehow when he finally threw it away, how he believed, like a child, that Louis would  _know_  somehow, that he would call him up and demand an explanation, would maybe even show up, and pound on the door. And it would somehow be okay in the end, because they’d laugh over it, how foolish they were to build something on top of such a flimsy little thing, and they’d build new structures, new cities they could call their own, and it would be all cement and concrete and stone, things that would be standing for years and years to come.

And then he was curling over his counter, fists clenched, jaw tightening, because it was over,  _it was over,_  and he was playing the festival back over in his mind, and it hurt, it stabbed and jabbed and pricked at him until he didn’t think he could hold it together any longer. His breathing was shaky and jagged and he was remembering dragging Louis to the Noah and the Whale set, because he’d loved them and he wanted Louis to love them too, and he remembered playing some stuff of theirs for Louis on his iPod later, in a hushed corner of their tour bus, remembered Louis pressing a kiss to his temple and telling him that if he kept listening to heartbreak music, he’d turn into a walking romantic comedy. 

And it was blasting in his head now, over everything, and he was falling to the ground, hunched over, folded into himself, and now his fists were beating patterns onto his legs, his stomach, his chest.

_In a year, it’s gonna be better. In a year I’m gonna be happy._

If he played it back enough times, he thought, it might just become true.


	4. Outtake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this before I'd really gotten far into the plot of the fic, and it ended up not really working into the framework of what I had. But I liked it, so it's getting tacked on as an outtake!

He caught sight of him at a club one night, clutching a pint like an anchor, trying to forget the way the flashing lights and thumping music used to make him feel on top of the world, and he saw a flash of brown hair smoothed to a wave, of braces against a striped shirt.  _Louis!_  he almost called out, before he remembered the dozen other times he thought he’d seen him only to have it turn out to be someone else, before he remembered that he isn’t allowed to be calling out his name in a crowded club anymore anyway.

So he drank some more, shuffled around the dance floor a bit, and then, and then the music brought him face-to-face with the Louis clone in a darkened corner, and it  _was_  Louis, and he tried not to think about how it was always the music bringing them together. “Hey,” he mumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets, fingers digging into his skin through the denim because they’d rather be stroking the line of Louis’ jaw, or tangled in his hair, or slipping under his braces, and he can’t,  _he can’t_ , not anymore.

“How’ve ya been, mate?” Louis asked, and it didn’t sound like him, and Harry almost asked if he was okay, until he remembered that he wasn’t allowed to ask that anymore either.

“I’ve been, y’know, good. How you doing?”

A beat, then, “good.” And he could hear everything that wasn’t in that space, that space so crowded with notes that Harry wanted to scream; could hear the joke Louis might have made about how he was channeling Joey from  _Friends_  and how that would never work on him, could hear the murmured story Louis would have been whispering in his ear while he pressed a hand to Harry’s chest like it wasn’t enough to just be near him. And that was what hurt the most, this space that had grown over what used to be, and so Harry bowed out of the conversation, barely even hearing Louis tossing out a quiet, sort of mumbled, “see you later then, eh?”

And when, not even an hour later, the music threw them back together, and Louis grinned, leaned in and said, “one more time with feeling, Haz?”--and there was something was something off about the grin, it was too perfect, too polished, and Harry could hear the hissed  _I’ve always been good for a show, Haz, or hadn’t you heard?_  but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care because Louis is in front of him and pressed against his chest, quoting fucking  _blink-182_  at him like the tasteless idiot he was--Harry didn’t bother with answering, only reached out and took him.

It was almost as if nothing had changed, and Harry found that he was angry somewhere underneath the surface about that. It seemed unfair, that the cramped bathroom stall should still feel like a second home, that Louis’ hand running down his chest should still feel so familiar; something should’ve changed, he thought, and it’s not fair,  _it’s not fair_ , but Harry pushed the thought out of his mind and just concentrated. Concentrated on Louis’ heartbeat stuttering beneath his fingertips, on Louis’ fingers tangled in his hair and scraping against his scalp, on Louis Louis  _Louis_  until it’s over and their breathing’s ragged and heavy and it’s done, it’s over, and Louis is gone.

He crumpled against the wall then, hands shaking, heart pounding away in his ears, trying to forget the way Louis looked at him before the door swung shut; afraid, like his world had already gone dark and he was scared of losing any more light.


End file.
